


love that moves the sun and other stars

by softbeoms



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: (it's kind of coming of age???? i think it applies idk), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Choi Yeonjun-Centric, Coming of Age, Developing Relationship, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Insecurity, Introspection, It's a happy ending dw, M/M, Mutual Pining, Setting: Pre-Debut, choi beomgyu champion of healthy communication, choi yeonjun champion of self-deprecation, dramatic af confession scene bc it's me, there's an elaborate house metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softbeoms/pseuds/softbeoms
Summary: The reality of his situation was this:Choi Yeonjun was a house with too many locked doors and too many keys shoved under doormats.Choi Yeonjun was riddled with dark corners he didn’t want anyone to see.Choi Yeonjun was too selfish to offer love and not ask for something to be given in return.(Or: Beomgyu had loved Yeonjun for a very long time. Yeonjun caught up with him eventually.)
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 34
Kudos: 147
Collections: TXT Secret Santa Fic Fest 2020





	love that moves the sun and other stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timedhappiness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timedhappiness/gifts).



> so! my god! this was a roller coaster!
> 
> just going to say that writing for yeonjun is like trying to do a wisdom tooth extraction with a paper clip and a spoon. if i ever try to do anything in yeonjun pov again pls redirect me to this fic so i can give myself a reality check for how hard it is. 
> 
> the prompt i chose is pretty specific and spoiler-y so i'll put it in the end notes if ur curious about it!
> 
> to my recipient, i know that your prompt leaned more towards beomgyu but i spiraled really hard while reading it and spun out a yeonjun character-study. the prompt is still Very Present!!! it's just delivered in a way that you perhaps didn't expect i hope you still like it WAAAAAAH
> 
> to the peeps who helped me along during the writing process of this behemoth, thank you so much and i love you. you know who y'all are. 
> 
> this fic DID come with a playlist!! which u can listen to [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32vSDMIyMbysBUng9W1cDx). these were the songs i had on loop as i wrote so wahoo ur free to listen to it as u read.
> 
> **if you like it, please don't hesitate to leave a comment and kudos!**
> 
> **[DISCLAIMER: TXT AS DEPICTED HERE ARE NOT MEANT TO REFLECT THE MEMBERS IN REAL LIFE WHATSOEVER. THE CHARACTERS HERE ARE PURELY FICTIONAL.]**

Yeonjun often thought of the human body as a house. It wasn’t even his thought to claim, really; his mother had made the connection one night, when she was musing about souls and guts and human hearts. She’d been tipsy at the time, three glasses of wine in and having just finished a book for her night class. The book was to blame for the spiral apparently. Yeonjun never read it, so he couldn’t talk. 

“ _I_ _t’s so fascinating, Jjun,_ ” she’d said, voice a little too loud for eleven in the evening but Yeonjun never had the heart to say anything to her when she was like this. It was cool to see his mother roll her words in her mouth before she said them, all stuck together in a clump for Yeonjun to untangle. 

(She wasn’t one for speaking before thinking, his mother. She took her time, liked to arrange her thoughts in a neat row before saying them. But this had been a rare occasion where she was letting her mouth go off without stopping to filter herself. Yeonjun and his father quietly reveled in moments like this—the things she said varied from highly fascinating to highly entertaining, and they were _always_ interesting.) 

“ _Like, really if you think about it—the body is a house isn’t it? Different bits of soul living in different rooms, all stacked together, sitting next to each other. Some of the rooms connecting, some of them with locked doors. We let people in at the front door and show them the sitting room, the kitchen. But never the basement, never the attic, never our bedrooms unless we trust them. A_ house _Yeonjun! The human body is a house!_ ” 

It never left his mind afterward, because it _did_ make sense. The human body is a house. 

Yeonjun’s body was a house. 

There was the maintenance involved to keep him running. There was the upkeep that came with his job to make sure he looked his best at all times. There were rooms in him, too, just like his mother said; multitudes of little rooms that stored every little piece that made him who he was. A kitchen that cooked up his ambition, a sitting room for his pride, basements full of ghosts. There were rooms that were locked, reasons unknown to him now. There were rooms that he let other people see. Rooms he didn’t like to think about. 

Yeonjun had been careful with the keys to those rooms, kept them in drawers only he knew about. He barely entered them himself out of a sense of self-preservation. Human beings were messy, see, and Yeonjun was no exception. There was ugliness in each person, bits of darkness both innate and learned. It was human to have them and even more so to hate them. 

Yeonjun was very human in the sense that he hated those bits very much. Because those bits were dangerous. Those bits made people stop loving you. 

Yeonjun wasn’t sure if he felt real unless people were loving him. 

There was a new kid joining the company, apparently. How Soobin found out about him, Yeonjun would rather not know. It wasn’t even supposed to be a big deal; new kids came and went every day. It was the nature of the trainee system. But this was different. 

“He’s joining the debut lineup immediately, from my understanding,” Soobin said, his words slurred slightly by food. He was valiantly trying to finish off his lunch in three bites. Yeonjun didn’t have the heart to tell him it was futile, so he just passed him another water bottle and tried not to laugh at how his cheeks bulged. 

“Immediately?” Yeonjun asked, turning back to his own food. He didn’t know how to process the news, exactly, so he stuffed a piece of dry chicken breast into his mouth and chewed. Better that than saying anything he might regret. 

Soobin was too busy guzzling a bottle of water to answer right away but luckily, he seemed to have heard Yeonjun. “Yeah,” the younger said, wiping at his mouth with an arm. “I was surprised to hear it, too. Never got to hear the name but like, _immediately_? He’s gotta be good then, right?” 

Yeonjun hummed. “He should be, yeah.” 

It was hard to name the small lump that had developed in the pit of his stomach, but Yeonjun could describe what it did to him just fine. It was almost like a sudden and slight disturbance to his heartbeat. Almost acidic, slightly bitter. And maybe it was because he was tired, or because he was sat in his own grime and eating half a cup of rice and two pieces of chicken breasts with nothing but salt to their name, or because he was just a shitty person sometimes, but he couldn’t help but feel a little resentful. Intimidated. 

_I was here for months before they confirmed that I was set for the debut team._

The thought lingered before Yeonjun could shake it, and soon enough it was solid, a tree taking root in the garden of his mind. He winced a little; there was no point in thinking like this. Bitterness was useless when you were a trainee, when so much of your career hinged on cooperation, on knowing when and where to funnel your competitive spirit. If Yeonjun knew what was good for him (and he prided himself in knowing it pretty well), he’d kill the train of thought before it escalated any further. 

So he stuffed another piece of chicken into his mouth, imagined himself crushing the sapling with his heel. That should be enough.

The new kid was named Choi Beomgyu and he wasn’t at all what Yeonjun was expecting.

In truth, Yeonjun didn’t know _what exactly_ it was that he was expecting but it wasn’t this; Beomgyu was quiet, moved with his shoulders tucked into his body and his eyes low. He barely looked at any of their faces as he was pulled up in front of the practice room for his introduction, only smiling at their feet as he said his name before bowing at the waist. Yeonjun joined in on the chorus of voices welcoming him and took note of how his ears bloomed red. 

He didn’t have the opportunity to talk with him much after that, practice quickly going underway and leaving Yeonjun with no thoughts save for getting his body one with the music. There was always a weird sense of alignment that overtook Yeonjun whenever he danced, the very physical sensation of everything snapping into place, all the rooms of his body quieting as they took in this one singular thing. And it never failed to rob him of any other thought. So he dropped his concerns over Choi Beomgyu and his red ears, his tucked-in shoulders. 

_Check out the new kid later_ , he thought to himself as he sank into position. _Later_. 

And later came in the form of what must have been a weird first impression made during a break in between practice. 

Yeonjun walked up to Choi Beomgyu, the new kid, the boy meant to join them for the debut lineup, the boy with the red ears, throwing an arm around him in a move of casual grace that usually escaped him in social situations. And then as if on auto-pilot, he just started _talking_. 

“You’re Beomgyu right?” he asked, voice smooth and posture relaxed and it was so _weird_ , the way Yeonjun was acting right now. It felt both forced and completely natural, leaning into Beomgyu’s space and watching blood rush to his cheeks. 

“Y-Yes,” the boy stuttered, his body trying to fold into the motion of a bow but Yeonjun’s weight stopped him short. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

_Cute_ , he thought in passing. “You’re ‘01 aren’t you?” he asked, thanking the heavens for Soobin’s shady sources when Beomgyu nodded.

“You can call me hyung, then. I’m Yeonjun hyung,” he said, and he really was wondering why he was still talking at this point. Every iota in his body was telling him to stop, to step back, because he was most probably weirding the absolute _shit_ out of this kid. But he kept going, because Yeonjun never learned how to half-ass anything, even this. 

“Yeonjun hyung,” Beomgyu repeated, and his voice was such a surprise, low and rolling and covered in honey. His face was so sweet (it was the first thing that Yeonjun noticed about him), almost cherubic, and there was a brightness to him that was reminiscent of a doll fresh out of the box; to hear a voice like his come out of a face like _that_ was disarming to say the least. 

“That’s me,” Yeonjun replied. He was moving them now, he realized belatedly, his legs walking all on their own. They were moving past the mirrors and the benches and the water cooler, all the way to the trainee leader board. There was a mounting feeling of dread in him the closer they got to the bulletin board—he had no idea why he was moving at all. Yeonjun would very much like to stop, would very much like to redo this entire thing. But time kept going and he kept walking. 

They slowed to a stop before the leader board, and it was funny, really, how much misery and delight it caused; it was a simple Excel sheet with names and points printed out on a landscaped piece of A4 bond paper. There was no laminating or other fanfare, it was just pinned to the corkboard with thumbtacks. The fate of thirty-something individuals all hinging on a flimsy piece of paper. 

“Look,” Yeonjun said, pointing at the very top of one of the lists, where his name was, little black letters that meant the world to him. “Look who came first in singing.” 

Beomgyu leaned forward, squinted up at the paper. “Choi Yeonjun,” he said, rolling the syllables around in his mouth like he was taste-testing wine. 

Yeonjun moved his finger to the next list. “Who’s first in dancing?” 

“Choi Yeonjun,” 

“Who’s first in rap?” He was looking at Beomgyu now, watching the younger’s eye follow where Yeonjun was pointing. There was a stirring in his chest that he couldn’t name, something both golden and slightly blotchy. His ego and his resentment intermingling, maybe. 

“Choi Yeonjun,” Beomgyu said, turning to look at him, and it was with a slight jolt that Yeonjun realized that this was the first time the younger was meeting his gaze head-on. 

“Guess who Choi Yeonjun is,” he said, his voice all confident and _good lord when was Yeonjun going to shut up?_

“I’m guessing hyung is Choi Yeonjun,” Beomgyu said and his eyes really were big, Yeonjun thought. So young and untouched by exhaustion. 

He smiled. Or his mouth did. Heaven knows Yeonjun wasn’t really the one doing it. “That’s right.” 

A new brightness bloomed in Beomgyu’s eyes. The edges of his lips were curled in a smile. “Hyung’s _cool_ ,” 

There was a skipping in Yeonjun’s heart, a new edge of sunlight creeping into the already confusing mix of emotions. Cool. Beomgyu, the new recruit, the boy who was so good that he was put in the debut lineup immediately, thought _he_ was _cool_. 

It felt strange, this entire interaction. Both out of body and completely immersive. Yeonjun was there and he was also fifteen feet above, yelling at himself to stop, still trying to get himself to stop. He realized what that stirring in his chest was, looking into this kid’s bright eyes and seeing his own face reflected back at him—it was his pride in its sitting room, who must have smelled new blood in the air and felt the need to unfurl its feathers like some ridiculous peacock. 

It was his pride that had opened the front door before Beomgyu could even knock, had let Beomgyu in to see all the ways he shined. 

And Yeonjun wanted to laugh, because of course it would rear its head the moment Yeonjun was intimidated. Pride was a restless thing, his especially so. And maybe in the future he’d regret letting his ego steer him so recklessly, that he’d let it get so far away from him and affect a kid that, in all truths, was harmless. For now, though, it was almost an offensive maneuver. The kid who’d walked in and was chosen so quickly would see that he had a long way ahead of him yet. He would see that Yeonjun was sitting at the top of the heap. The final finish line. 

For now, it was vindication. 

(If a hiss escaped from one of the shadowy corners of Yeonjun’s heart, he ignored it.)

“He’s shy, isn’t he?” he told Soobin lowly, nodding towards the little figure slumped in one of the benches. It was Beomgyu, because of course it was him; Yeonjun’s brain had decided to latch onto him as of late, although the reasons were unknown to him. Perhaps as a self-defense mechanism because there was a new fire in his veins now, a new rushing tide. _Competitiveness_ , he knew, his pride sitting pretty in the foyer of his body and sticking up its eyebrows at the newcomer. 

“Who? Beomgyu?” Bless Soobin for having the tact to keep his voice quiet. 

Yeonjun nodded. It had been six days since Beomgyu had come into the company and apart from that strange afternoon when Yeonjun first approached him, the younger hadn’t talked much, not to him or the others. And it wasn’t even for a lack of trying; Yeonjun had watched many a person try and strike up a conversation with Beomgyu in the last few days. People were just drawn to him it seemed, because they kept coming back, even when all Beomgyu did in response was nod or smile or say a few words. 

But the younger looked to be more spooked by the attention than receptive of it, his shoulders more hunched than they’d been when he first came in.

And that might be Yeonjun’s fault, actually. 

“It’s most definitely your fault, hyung,” Soobin said matter-of-factly, and shit, Yeonjun must have said that last bit aloud. “What were you thinking, cornering him like that so soon after he came in? What image he must have of all of us now just because you wanted to show off.”

“I regret telling you things sometimes,” Yeonjun said. Soobin had already given him this same speech when Yeonjun had first told him about how he’d possibly fucked up with the new kid. “I already know this, Soobin.”

“And yet you’re doing nothing to fix it,” Soobin retorted, an eyebrow raised. And Yeonjun could only look away, mouth curled in defeat, because he knew Soobin was right. 

It was a weird in-between that he was caught in now, because while Yeonjun did feel a very real and almost crippling regret for how he’d acted almost a week ago, there was also a very real part of him that didn’t feel any remorse for it. It was smaller in comparison, sure, but it was _there_ and Yeonjun couldn’t ignore it. He hated that he couldn’t ignore it. 

“Hyung please,” Soobin said, voice quiet and a touch pleading. It made Yeonjun snap to look at him again, and the downturn of his mouth was enough to send a strong spike of guilt straight into Yeonjun’s chest. “He’s going to be a part of the team, and we start practice as a unit soon. Make this right, _please_.” 

Yeonjun pressed his lips together. He imagined himself grabbing the ugly little shadow in his heart by the scruff of its neck, stalking down to one of the rooms inside him that he didn’t usually dare touch. _I can’t let it escape again._

He imagined himself kicking the door open, throwing the shadow onto the floor. Imagined himself making a desperate reach for the doorknob and slamming the door shut. 

Soobin sighed, and it shook Yeonjun out of his thoughts. Right. He was waiting for an answer.

“I will,” he said, nodding. The younger looked unconvinced, but he hung his head in acquiescence. 

“Do it soon, okay?” Soobin said, patting Yeonjun on the shoulder before turning on his heel. He made a beeline for the bench that Beomgyu was sat on, plopping down next to him and striking up a conversation and _huh_ , Soobin was never usually this socially confident. It had taken a long time before Soobin was comfortable enough to even look Yeonjun in the eye while talking. 

But there Soobin was, smiling and open-faced and poking softly at Beomgyu, who was looking at him with that same wide-eyed look Yeonjun had been on the receiving end of before. Yeonjun watched Soobin almost melt at the gaze, and although he had no idea how exactly he felt for the newest member, this at least he could relate to. 

He couldn’t help but chuckle a little, watching Soobin coo over Beomgyu, who was unfurling slowly like a flower about to bloom with all the attention. His eyes really were so big, so round, so full of light. Yeonjun could see them from where he stood. 

A passing thought took him then, one that rattled his ribs before it dissolved into an echo: 

_I would like for him to look at me like that again_.

They were having a photoshoot today. Taehyun was excited by it. He was trying to hide it but Yeonjun could tell. 

"Stop smiling at me like you can see my thoughts, hyung, it's creepy as shit," Taehyun said, his eyes never leaving the gargantuan set up of cameras and lighting in a few ways ahead of them. They'd been sent to an abandoned gymnasium for this one, and Yeonjun understood why Taehyun was looking at everything all bug-eyed; this _was_ the most lavish shoot they'd had so far. Trainee photoshoots were usually for cataloging purposes; very routine and seen more as a way to chart growth than anything else. The company didn't like to spend too much money on them. 

But for this one, they were uncharacteristically generous: There was a huge set with props and they had multiple wardrobe changes and a full-on makeup station. They were even doing the shoot itself at the bottom of the gym’s biggest pool, the set all grungy and very coming-of-age-y. Taehyun was having a blast with it, and Yeonjun could relate to his (albeit hidden) enthusiasm. 

"But I _can_ see your thoughts, Taehyunie," Yeonjun crowed, bumping Taehyun's shoulder with his own and moving away when he felt the younger try to retaliate. "You're all excited. It's cute." 

"I'm not cute. I am a shark in the waters. Don't make me eat you." 

"You do have a way with words, eh, Taehyun-ah?" Soobin interjected, coming closer to the two of them. He was in a new outfit now, all made up and ready for his solo shoot. The group shot had wrapped up a few minutes before, and now it was time for individual photos. "Not even noon and you're already threatening people with cannibalism." 

"Yeonjun hyung was being weird," Taehyun reasoned, avoiding the hand that Yeonjun was going to hit him with. 

"I was not—”

"He's weird all the time," Soobin said like the traitor he was. "I thought you'd be used to it by now, haven't you trained with him longer?" 

"There are certain things that the human brain just cannot absorb," Taehyun sniffed, ignoring Yeonjun's indignant sputtering. “And I only trained with him for a week longer than you, hyung. We both should have developed immunity by now.” 

"Would it kill you two to be nice to me for just one day?" Yeonjun whined.

"Yes,” the two spoke in unison, not even sparing Yeonjun a glance. He huffed and hit them both over the head. 

The three of them shared a giggle before Soobin paused, muttering a short ‘excuse me’ before walking off. 

“Where’s he going?” Taehyun asked, but his question was soon answered when Beomgyu came into view, in new clothes himself, who looked up when Soobin hollered his name. He lit up little by little the closer Soobin got to him, his lips fully stretching into a smile when Soobin hauled him into a playful half-hug. 

“They’ve gotten close, huh?” Taehyun mused. 

Yeonjun hummed in lieu of answering. The two of them _had_ gotten close. Or, well, close for Beomgyu’s standards; he still wasn’t talking to other people much outside of Soobin from Yeonjun’s understanding. 

“Good for Soobin hyung, he needs more friends,” the younger said, and there was such a strong note of well-meaning firmness in his voice that it made Yeonjun laugh. 

“Good for Beomgyu too,” Yeonjun added absent-mindedly. “It’s good that he’s talking to someone and that it’s Soobin; Soobin knows how to put people at ease.” 

It was quiet for a moment. Yeonjun turned his head to find that Taehyun was looking at him, something close to amusement on his face.

“You really care about him already,” the younger said. Yeonjun got the feeling that it was supposed to be a question but the intent got lost when the words were half-way out of Taehyun’s mouth. 

And, well, Taehyun was right. Of course Yeonjun cared. That truth felt obvious. 

Yeonjun shrugged. “He’s a teammate.” 

But then Taehyun shook his head, huffing a little. “That’s not what I meant, but yes you’re right.” He faced ahead again, a small, odd smile stretching his mouth. “He’s a teammate.” 

And Yeonjun was going to ask him what he meant by that, but he was called away by the stylists; it was his turn at the mad house now. 

Taehyun waved as Yeonjun made his leave, that same odd smile still on his face. 

As luck would have it, Yeonjun ended up sitting next to Beomgyu on the bus back to the company. He could feel two specific pairs of eyes on him but he elected to ignore them, instead smiling down at the younger as he took the aisle seat. Beomgyu smiled too and _huh_ , maybe it was just a trick of the light or maybe it was just Yeonjun’s own eyesight fucking up, but this smile was different. A new one. 

Yeonjun blinked. The bus lurched into motion and Yeonjun felt his stomach lurch with it. 

“Hi hyung,” Beomgyu said, still smiling that new smile. “Today was fun, yeah?” 

Yeonjun blinked some more, groped for something to say. He landed on a lame “Yeah, it was,” but Beomgyu’s answering smile was somehow brighter. Like he was happy to have gotten a response at all. 

“Did hyung see me pose? I looked good posing, didn’t I?” the younger asked, almost—no, _definitely_ teasing, and Yeonjun was hit with such a strong wave of whiplash that he thought that it was miraculous he hadn’t keeled over. Beomgyu’s eyes were shining, and backlit by the setting sun beyond the bus window, he looked almost nothing like the boy who had first stumbled into the practice room a week ago. 

“I think I was getting ready when you were called in to shoot,” Yeonjun said, because he didn’t know what else he could say. He was still reeling from the change in demeanor. (But to be fair to himself, he was pretty sure it was true; Beomgyu had been stepping off the set when Yeonjun emerged from wardrobe, had smiled shyly as Yeonjun passed him. _Shyly_. Beomgyu had smiled _shyly_ then. _God_.) 

Beomgyu pouted. _Pouted_. Yeonjun had no idea what to do with his hands. “Hyung should watch next time then, yeah?” 

Yeonjun could only nod, shock still keeping him mum. Beomgyu kept talking after, taking his silence as permission to continue, and although the rest of his words lacked the teasing edge, it was still a surprise at just how much he had to say. He jumped from subject to subject, talking about the lighting and the cameras and the clothes and the food and “Hyung, it was amazing, wasn’t it? I’ve never been to a set like that before—” 

And Yeonjun, after the initial wave of surprise, leaned in to listen, let the younger guide the conversation and butt in occasionally when he felt like it was needed. A Beomgyu that talked was leagues better than a Beomgyu that avoided Yeonjun’s eye. A Beomgyu that smiled at him freely and openly, like he was giving away a gift he didn’t necessarily understand the real value of, was leagues better than a Beomgyu that seemed to flinch back whenever Yeonjun so much as stepped in his direction. 

So Yeonjun let him talk, smiled a little wider whenever he lost thread of his own thoughts. His sleeves occasionally slipped past his fingers whenever he gesticulated too freely. He had a slight lisp that became more obvious whenever he slipped into satoori (Yeonjun couldn’t place it yet but it was vaguely Gyeongsang-do). He seemed so _harmless_ , so _endearing_.

 _This is what you feared_ , he told the hissing darkness that wanted to take up space in the forefront of his mind, the pride that kept trying to strong-arm him into submission. _You feared this. I hope you realize how ridiculous you are._

“Hyung are you listening?” Beomgyu asked, bringing Yeonjun out of his head. Those wide eyes were looking at him, and Yeonjun wondered how many people must have melted when they were faced with these eyes. Soobin’s immediate attachment to him suddenly made so much sense. 

“I was, I was,” Yeonjun hastened to reassure. “Keep going, Beomgyu-yah. Hyung was listening.” 

The younger smiled again, continued talking, and Yeonjun let his thoughts rearrange, let the rooms inside him re-sort themselves. He’d made a mess of a first impression but maybe he could fix things yet. Make the welcome a little warmer than the initial fuck up. He’d shunt his pride to the side and walk Beomgyu through the halls that were warmer, the halls that Yeonjun liked to show the people he wanted to stay around for a long time. 

Beomgyu’s eyes were shot through with gold against the setting sun. Beomgyu had a lisp that got more obvious when he spoke in satoori. Beomgyu was chattier underneath the shy exterior. 

He collected all these little details, molded them into bricks to wall off his apprehension. _You feared this. This is what you were afraid of. I hope you realize how ridiculous you are._

Yeonjun could fix this yet. 

It was two weeks after Beomgyu joined the company that the higher-ups decided that they were ready to fully focus on the debut team lineup. The five of them were each given keys to a new practice room that they had all on their own and were told to get to work. And so they did. 

The first practice had been awkward, and Yeonjun was already being generous by using that word. And it was weird, really, that they were so awkward; they'd spent a lot of time together during and outside the group practices. Even Beomgyu had opened up more by then, and he was their newest addition. Taehyun had pointed it out himself when they were on a water break (a painfully silent water break punctuated only by panting):

"Why aren't we talking? Why are we acting like we just met today?" 

He'd been laughing as he said it, and his laughter was enough to set the rest of them off into giggle fits. 

"Why _are_ we acting like we just met today?" Soobin had repeated, on his back and laughing incredulously at the ceiling. "This is ridiculous. We're acting ridiculous." 

"I have literally seen all of you with drool down your shirts," Beomgyu had mused, sending the rest of them into another bout of hysterics. "We're behaving like pussy-footing Victorians right now and I don't appreciate it." 

" _Pussy-footing Victorians_?" Yeonjun had gasped through his laughter. 

"Hyung tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm _wrong_." 

Suffice it to say that the atmosphere had been considerably lighter after that. 

And then things changed, little by little but also all at once.

Learning to live around and with four people was a hurdle that Yeonjun didn’t expect. He’d thought that, given their previous living conditions, being with four people would be so much easier. More one-on-one time to get to know them, more chances to bond, more reason to build a strong rapport and all that. But the crowd had been a good buffer, it turned out. This new and sudden intimacy was harder to work with; it felt almost too big in Yeonjun’s hands, bulky and foreign. 

It helped that they were all willing to try, though. 

Soobin would put on a film he knew they all liked and let it run while he left to make snacks, smiling secretively to himself when one by one the younger members would pile into their ratty couch and peer sleepily at the screen, turning to Soobin like baby birds waiting for their mother when he arrived with cola and pretzels. (At that point, Yeonjun would make his presence known by arriving with several pastries that were definitely not in the company diet plan but their instructors didn’t have to know.) 

Yeonjun himself would bring ice creams to afternoon practices, knocking on the door to their practice studio twice as by the agreed-upon signal. One of them would open the door, and then they’d all file into the corridor just outside, where there weren’t any CCTV cameras to catch them breaking their diets. 

Taehyun had his own way of bonding with them that was quite cute if a little surprising at first. He had the tendency to approach them like a prowling cat and topple them bodily to the floor whenever he wanted affection. The first time he did it to Yeonjun, Yeonjun had been facing the other way, talking to Beomgyu about a section in their choreography, only to be hit suddenly by Taehyun’s weight and sent crashing to the floor. 

“What the fuck?” Yeonjun had sputtered while Beomgyu nearly died laughing. 

“Hyungie,” Taehyun had said, his words muffled against the fabric of Yeonjun’s shirt. “Pats.”

“What?” 

Taehyun had grabbed Yeonjun’s arm, twisted it a little for Yeonjun’s hand to rest on the top of Taehyun’s head. _Ah._

“Hyung. Pats.” 

Yeonjun had had no choice but to relent. He’d sent a warning glare to Beomgyu, who was still laughing. A little “You’ll know of this pain, too, just you wait,”. (And to Yeonjun’s smug delight, Beomgyu _had_ ended up knowing of that exact pain a few hours later, pinned to the floor under Taehyun’s weight and one of his hands carting through the youngest’s hair.) 

Kai didn’t really have to do much to bring them together; by the third day they spent together as a complete unit, Yeonjun was already sure that he’d be willing to both kill _and_ die for him, and he was also sure that everyone else was willing to as well. But he did have a cute little habit of rubbing their stomachs as a way of providing comfort and deriving it for himself. During breaks, after practice, when they were on the way home, or just whenever really—it wouldn’t be odd to find Kai’s arms wrapped around a member, his hands on their bellies, rubbing up and down. 

Beomgyu liked to have them sing together. Whenever they were all drained after unending hours of practice, Beomgyu would huff a little, take a sip of water, and rise on achy limbs to get his guitar (which had gained a spot of honor in their practice room. Beomgyu used to tote it back and forth from the dorm but it got to a point where it seemed futile to do so, considering they never left the practice room these days anyway). He’d cart the instrument back to where the rest of them were sitting and plop down with a tired groan, asking for song requests. 

It wasn’t an overnight process, getting closer, and teamwork was going to be another uphill battle, but their foundation started with these pieces. This would be their starting ground, the house of them built with these extended olive branches and made stronger with time. Yeonjun didn’t know much about what it meant to be a good team quite yet (hoped with all of his heart that it would be through this process that he’d learn) but he _did_ know this: Big acts of kindness began with small ones. His father often said so, and Yeonjun always believed his father. 

There was also the ongoing process of getting used to having people in the house of him, constantly. 

And the thing was, Yeonjun loved people. Loved being around them and getting to know them, but he also loved the time he spent without them. Valued it, really. Yeonjun was a person who needed to regain his bearings quite frequently; he needed time to be still, to re-orient himself. To set everything back in order before he could let anyone back in again. 

He didn’t have that anymore though. Or at least, whatever moment he _could_ have was mostly stolen—extended toilet breaks where he would walk to a farther bathroom from the practice studio, late at night if he stayed up longer than anyone else, purposefully drawing the short straw to shower last just so he could have it to himself without stressing time. 

He liked the others a lot, was beginning to think of them as the little brothers he never had, but they were still company. They still _felt_ like company. He still felt the need to put his best, most made-up foot forward, and although he’d long since gotten over having people in his business at all times (an adjustment that took a _while_ , mind you, considering that Yeonjun went from being an only child with a room of his own to sharing a room with ten or fifteen people), there was still a semblance of privacy when you were just trainees and nothing else. 

They were comets pinging around each other then, occasionally passing by, occasionally colliding, but nothing ever had a sense of permanence. They were all on their own independent courses. Yeonjun didn’t have to offer anything beyond what he was comfortable with.

Now though—now though, it was different. Now it was Yeonjun having four people constantly in his orbit. Now it was Yeonjun constantly _being_ in four other people’s orbit. There was no opting out of vulnerability now, it was paramount and expected that he would learn to be it at some point. And Yeonjun _liked_ vulnerability—or it was more that he liked the rewards of it. He kind of wanted to skip to that part now, without all the mess of the in-between. 

And the thing was, Yeonjun wasn’t a stranger to hard work. He wasn’t intimidated by it either. But there was a difference between pounding your feet into practice room floors until the soles of your sneakers were thinned down to nothing and laying your heart out in the open and hoping that people will still love it even if it’s not perfect. 

Yeonjun knew how to make his body bend and twist to his will, knew how to sharpen each angle down to absolute perfection. 

Yeonjun did not know how to perfect his heart. 

There were no instructions for that, no step-by-step guides. It would all be down to trial and error and that was a prospect that, quite frankly, terrified him. It wasn’t like practice, where you could take back a step or redo a move and not even have to think about it. Humans weren’t like that; when things went wrong it was rare that they let you keep trying. 

Yeonjun didn’t know what he’d do if he messed up and the members wouldn’t let him keep trying. 

_The problem_ , he thought, _of having people constantly being in the house of you is that they’ll eventually come across a room that they won’t like_. 

And his mother would say ( _had_ said, multiple times) that it was inevitable— _”Not everyone is going to like you, Jjun-ah. Love isn’t about choosing the person who loves you most out of a crowd of thousands. Love is about finding the people who will see you unravel and choose you anyway. Love is about_ showing _the ugly parts, about the people who make you want to_ try _showing the ugly parts.”_

Yeonjun imagined letting the others wander in on their own, imagined holding open doors to rooms that he himself feared entering. The same old fear gripped him, so familiar and worn it washed over him like a second skin. But right next to it was a surprising interruption—willingness, quiet but present. 

Because for all of Yeonjun’s fear, he was still _excited_. He was looking forward to facing what was ahead, and the prospect of having the members next to him as he did made that anticipation sharper. If it meant keeping them next to him, he could bring himself to try and be less afraid. 

Yeonjun wasn’t sure if he was ready to show them everything, but they did make him want to try. 

“I think I need to go again,” Beomgyu panted. He was bent at the waist with his hands on his knees, sweat dripping down from his brow and onto the hardwood floor. Yeonjun was close enough to him that his breath felt like it was touching his skin. 

“You sure?” Yeonjun asked. He himself was winded, in the middle of pushing a palm down the meat of his thigh to soothe the burn there. Every muscle in his body was screaming at him to stop, or at the very least to slow down, but there was a fire in his bones that he knew wouldn’t let him rest if he stopped now. He wanted to keep going, too. 

Beomgyu nodded and then hung his head, still panting. From this angle, his neck looked almost like it was about to break, like he was one of dolls that you kept together with rubber bands. He wiped his hands along his sweatpants before he straightened, and Yeonjun was getting to know the multiple faces of Choi Beomgyu, familiarizing himself with each new one that appeared. This one wasn’t new, but it still caught him off-guard each time. It was his “work face”, or that was what Yeonjun had taken to calling it. 

Steely eyes, his jaw set tight, his brows lax and lending a hardness to his face that wasn’t usually there.

Choi Beomgyu could get deathly serious. 

Yeonjun was a lot more surprised by it than he felt like he should be—the members were all similarly hardworking, all of them pushing their limits to heights none of them reckoned were possible. But there was something special about watching Beomgyu sink into his work mode, so immediate that it was like a switch was flipped. 

Beomgyu, far too often, felt like the sun. It was disarming to see him be a cold moon. 

“You sure, Beomgyu?” Yeonjun repeated. The younger really was sweating so much, and the way he was panting was worrying Yeonjun a little. “We can take five, it’s fine.” He met Soobin’s eye over Beomgyu’s head and pursed his lips. Soobin got the message, thankfully, and went to grab a towel and a bottle of water. He passed the towel to Yeonjun and pressed the bottle to Beomgyu’s cheek. It was a sign of his fatigue that he didn’t even flinch, only taking the bottle and chugging it down in one steady gulp. 

“Beomgyu,” Soobin said, voice gentle yet level. “Beomgyu we can take a breather. We can stop for a bit.”

For a moment there was nothing but their collective breathing, Beomgyu’s coming harsher than the rest. All of them were waiting it seemed; Yeonjun could see Kai and Taehyun hanging around the fringes of their little bubble, hesitant to join but concerned all the same. Yeonjun’s hands were twisted in the towel he was holding. 

But then Beomgyu sighed, his shoulders drooping in acquiescence. Yeonjun’s grip loosened some. “Fine,” Beomgyu said, and Yeonjun didn’t realize he was holding his breath until it left him. “ _Fine_ ,” 

“No need to be so aggressive,” Yeonjun teased, dropping the towel on Beomgyu’s head and rubbing it into his hair. “We’ll go again. We have the whole evening ahead of us. You can afford to take a break.”

Beomgyu shook him off, pouting up at him, his work face gone for the time being. Yeonjun didn’t know if he mourned its absence or not. 

The two youngest grabbed Beomgyu’s arms and dragged him to the side, Taehyun bodily tackling him onto the floor and Kai piling on top of them afterward. Beomgyu was yelling for help but Yeonjun and Soobin were too busy laughing to heed him. _Besides_ , Yeonjun thought, _someone needed to pin him down or else he’d keep going_. 

There was still a persistent itch right underneath his skin that begged for him to move, to keep going, but he could ignore it for now. 

Beomgyu screamed a few profanities and Soobin tried to shush him while still laughing. Taehyun managed to lift both himself and Kai’s weight on his back to slip a hand underneath and slap it over Beomgyu’s mouth. 

“Hyung don’t fucking lick my hand that’s barbaric!” 

“Language!” 

There were more important things to be concerned with right now. 

Kai screeched and Taehyun yelled as Beomgyu tried and failed to shove them off him. Soobin was bent over at the waist and howling. Yeonjun wanted to join in on the fun but it felt good to sit back and observe too, a little pressure-point of light growing in his chest as he watched on. 

After countless attempts, Beomgyu was able to push the maknaes off of him, Kai and Taehyun landing in a heap next to him. Beomgyu’s chest was heaving, but he was laughing too, and the sound of it loosened a knot in Yeonjun’s stomach that he didn’t know he had. 

But then Taehyun took an unopened water bottle and twisted the cap off, dumping its contents onto Beomgyu’s face, and Yeonjun forgot what he was thinking, too preoccupied with trying to keep himself upright as he laughed so hard it was a surprise he didn’t cough up his lungs. 

How they managed to calm down enough after that to take a proper break was beyond him. 

  
  


“That was rich coming from you, by the way,” Soobin said when all of it was over, the two of them on their backs in the practice room. The other three had drawn the short straw and left to get food. 

Yeonjun felt his eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “What was rich coming from me?” 

“What you told Beomgyu,” Soobin replied, and then in his best attempt at Yeonjun’s voice, “ _No need to be so aggressive_.” Soobin was making himself crack up, which Yeonjun absolutely did not appreciate. But the younger was intent to keep going. “ _We’ll go again_. _We have the whole evening ahead of us_. _You can afford to take a break_.” 

“It’s impressive that you memorized that,” Yeonjun said, unamused. Soobin was still laughing. Yeonjun slapped his stomach with the arm that felt the least sore. His muscles stung with the action but Soobin’s choked hiccup was worth it. 

“You’re making me change the subject! I was making a point!” 

“Then get to it!” 

“It was rich coming from you,” Soobin restarted his thought, his arms coming up to gesture emphatically, “because when _we_ use that speech with _you_ , you don’t listen.” 

Yeonjun had no idea what to say to that.

“It was even funnier that it worked,” the younger added. His arms were still up. Yeonjun watched them move to avoid having to look at Soobin’s face. “I was almost sure Beomgyu would keep going.” 

“Why?” Yeonjun’s eyes shifted to the ceiling. Had it always been that color? 

“Because he’s a lot like you,” Soobin said, matter-of-fact, and Yeonjun was hit with an overwhelming sense of derision. “You’re a lot alike in that way, I’ve noticed.” 

That made Yeonjun scoffed—he couldn’t help it. “We’re nothing alike,” 

And it was the truth—Yeonjun knew and believed it to be the truth. From the moment Beomgyu stepped into the practice room (that afternoon felt like eons ago now), Yeonjun knew they’d be different, and with each new stone unturned, with each new room unlocked and shown, it felt like the list of their differences only grew longer. 

Beomgyu almost felt like he was carved from a dream and set into a human form. He bubbled over like fresh champagne. He giggled over spilled milk. Yeonjun was half-convinced he was fae, that one day he’d wake up and find Beomgyu had flown off and away like a passing sprite. 

But where Beomgyu floated, Yeonjun kept his feet stuck in mud. 

“I’m not saying you’re exactly the same person,” Soobin reasoned, his voice pulling Yeonjun out of his head. “Like, obviously you’re different people. _Obviously_. But, I don’t know, I see a similar hunger in both of you. A similar voracity, maybe. Like you’re both running on different fuel than the rest of us.” 

And _huh_. Yeonjun hummed to show that he had listened. 

A similar hunger. 

He thought of Beomgyu’s eyes, their underlying steel. 

He pursed his lips. He could see himself being open to being wrong, just this once. 

“Hyung!” someone yelled, and Yeonjun turned. He’d been staring at the wall, he realized belatedly. He first saw the lights and blinked a little, squinting past the glare and trying to look for the face of the person who called him. 

It turned out to be Kai, who paused in the middle of his stride when he caught sight of Yeonjun’s face. He immediately regretted turning so quickly; his cheeks were still wet. 

“Yes Kai?” he sniffed, trying very hard not to give in to the urge to wipe his face. The younger looked almost comically stiff, looking from Yeonjun’s face, at the tears that were still flowing like a steady stream, to the door on the other side of the room. He wanted an exit, was most likely regretting walking in the first place, and Yeonjun couldn’t blame him. 

Kai was probably just choosing a room at random, maybe looking for a practice space. It wasn’t his fault that the one he’d chosen had happened to have Yeonjun in it. 

“I can leave if you need the room,” he said after a while, not sure of what else he could say. His hands were slightly numb, tingling as he used them to get up from his place on the floor. His legs were no better, sparking with each step he took to try and revive them. He’d been sitting for longer than he realized. “Sorry about all this,” 

“No!” Kai exclaimed, his arms going in front of him, and he looked genuinely distressed, the poor thing. Like he was worried he’d disturbed Yeonjun. Yeonjun would hug him if only his body would cooperate with him. “Hyung, it’s fine, I can go find another room—”

“Hyuka,” he interrupted. He felt a little dumb, standing here with his cold hands in his pockets, his face still wet, pretending that everything he was doing right now was completely normal. “It’s fine, I promise, I’ll leave—” 

But before he could take another step, Kai had rushed to him. He slapped his hands on Yeonjun’s shoulders and pushed him back down, gentle and firm all at once. “Hyung, stay,” he said, and Yeonjun remembered how shocked he was to learn that Kai was an older brother. “ _I can’t see it_ ,” he’d half-joked. Now though, looking at the stern lines of Kai’s face, he could see it clear as day. 

A stretch of silence. Kai’s eyes were as unmoving as steel. There was no chance of winning. 

Yeonjun sighed, hung his head. “ _Fine_ ,” He felt Kai rub his shoulders, felt a weight on his crown that he guessed must be Kai’s cheek. “Bossing me around now, Kai-yah?” he teased, or tried to. His voice was still a little too rough for anything to sound genuine. 

Kai shook his head and Yeonjun felt it against his scalp. “Not at all hyungie. You just need it right now, I think.”

Yeonjun chuckled. He couldn’t really deny that. 

“You wanna be alone right now?”

He weighed his options, and then nodded. “Yeah, if that’s okay.” 

“Always okay, hyung,” Kai said. “I’ll send someone in to check on you later, yeah?”

Yeonjun nodded.

Kai gave him one last squeeze before letting go, smiling softly down at him. Yeonjun smiled back. 

When the door shut behind the younger, Yeonjun’s shoulders sagged and he let himself fall on his back. The cold slowly seeped back into his bones. His mother would frown at him if she saw him now, with that little dip between her eyebrows that he inherited from her. He frowned up at the ceiling in his best approximation of her expression, and then dropped it. 

It’d been a rough day for him, today. It was a rough day on everyone. 

Trainee rankings were updated today. 

And Yeonjun had maintained his ranking, had maintained his lead, but his points had dropped from last month’s. He had a hunch that his individual evaluation was what pulled it down—scratch that, it was most definitely his individual evaluation. Yeonjun knew that he didn’t do good this month, that it was a borderline wreck. And he couldn’t even trace the exact reason as to why everything went to shit, because it could be a multitude of things. 

He’d been nervous, yeah, but Yeonjun had long-since figured out how to work around his nerves, to tie them into a reasonably-sized ball, to push them down and work around them. He’d delivered some of the best performances of his life while nervous, so it wasn’t that. 

He had wondered, staring up at the ranking, if he’d gotten complacent. He’d made it into the debut lineup, after all. The company had let him know that they were “almost certain” he’d see himself debuting within the next two or three years. Was that enough of a pat on the back for him, then? Was that what happened? Was Yeonjun sitting on his laurels now that debut was “almost certain”? 

It was a knock on the practice room door that shook him out of his head. 

Yeonjun leaned his weight on his elbows and sat up. The door opened. 

“Hyung?” 

Something twisted in Yeonjun’s chest. 

Beomgyu’s face peered through the gap. 

He sat up straighter, tried for a smile. “Hey Gyu.” 

Beomgyu came in on uneasy feet, face a weird cross between worried and trying not to look worried. He had two boba teas in hand, and Yeonjun brightened a little at the sight of them. 

“Hey,” Beomgyu said, and then all of a sudden his face was the sun, the shakiness of his approach almost completely gone as he walked further into the room. Yeonjun had no time to marvel at the change because all too soon, Beomgyu was in front of him, passing him a cup and a straw. 

“Kai sent you?” he asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it anyway. 

Beomgyu’s answering smile was soft. “He did tell me that I would find you here.” Yeonjun watched him fiddle with the plastic straw wrapper. (Beomgyu tended to fiddle with things when he was nervous. Or bored. But nervous counted more in this case.) “He didn’t send me here, though. I went all on my own, hyung!” 

In spite of himself, Yeonjun smiled. 

“Thank you for the boba.” 

“Of course.” 

Maybe Beomgyu caught on to Yeonjun not being in the headspace to talk, or maybe Kai briefed him before he came here, but the younger stayed quiet. He scrolled on his phone, periodically sipped on his tea, and let Yeonjun be, and Yeonjun felt like crying all over again for how grateful he was. He didn’t know if he could handle being prodded right now, and even in the short time they’ve spent together, it was abundantly clear to him that he wouldn’t survive Beomgyu’s specific style of prodding. 

They finished their drinks in an easy quiet. Yeonjun found that he could breathe easy for the first time in hours. 

It was Beomgyu who broke the silence first. “Do you wanna do anything?” He was looking at Yeonjun now, eyes and face placid.

Yeonjun shook his head. “No.” 

Beomgyu hummed. He was done with his tea too; he was twirling the straw between his fingers, lips pursed absently. 

Yeonjun set his empty cup down and splayed back on the floor. A few moments passed before he heard Beomgyu follow suit. 

“I don’t think I ever stared up at the ceiling here,” Beomgyu mused. His comment pulled a soft laugh out of Yeonjun. 

“We’re always too busy sweating to focus on anything else.” 

Beomgyu giggled. And then it was silent again. This time, it was Yeonjun who broke it. 

“Big day today huh?” 

“It is, yeah,” It’d been 4 months by now since Beomgyu joined. Not enough to be a seasoned veteran of the horror that was update day but enough that he can fake apathy if he wanted to. Beomgyu almost never wanted to, though. When Yeonjun cut a glance at him, he looked openly disappointed. Yeonjun had lost count of the times he’d seen that exact expression today. “Congrats, by the way,” he added. “You made number 1 again! That’s huge!” 

His smile felt especially clumsy but hopefully Beomgyu wouldn’t notice it. (Fat chance of that happening; the younger was a lot more perceptive than people gave him credit for.) “Thank you.” 

Something in Beomgyu’s face softened. “You’re upset.”

“Well,” Yeonjun ran agitated fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I am.” 

And _god_ saying it out loud made him feel like the biggest asshole. Because Yeonjun could never learn how to settle, could he? It wasn’t enough that he was in first place, he had to always be better than the last time, always had to come away with a higher point average. Literally _anyone else_ would be happy to be in his position, but Yeonjun had seen his scores, compared it to last month’s, and declared it all a failure. 

A fucking _asshole_ , that’s what Yeonjun was. And that was what he said out loud. 

Beomgyu’s eyebrows raised at his exclamation. 

“It’s just,” Yeonjun started, stopped. Ran his hands through his hair again. “It’s so screwed because, like, I’m _still_ first, right? Like it wasn’t like I free-fell off the ranks. Almost nothing changed but like—my points are lower this month than they were last month and I fucking saw that and _nothing else_. Everything else became obsolete in my head and it’s so _fucked_. Like, there are people who would do anything to be in my spot and I’m here drowning in self-pity because I lost points. It’s _fucked_.” 

He didn’t realize he’d ran out of air until he finished, his next inhale coming in ragged. He didn’t even know what came over him to speak. 

For a while it was quiet, Yeonjun staring at the ceiling and Beomgyu staring at him, the only interruption coming from the sounds of them breathing. He could feel the heat of the younger’s gaze on the side of his face, and there was a bubbling in Yeonjun’s stomach that he could at least name: Regret. It could also be shame. A destructive mixture of both. 

He took another deep breath and blew it out through his nose. There was an overwhelming sense that he spoke too much, too soon, that he’d said things he couldn’t take back. _Here we go_ , said a vindictive voice from one of the shadowy corners of his mind, _let’s see if he’ll still like you now_. 

He forced himself to sit up, put his face in his hands. More silence. Yeonjun wanted to put his head through a nearby wall. He wanted to take his words out of the air and eat them back down. He wanted a fucking hug, maybe. 

Beomgyu’s hum shattered the lull. “Hyung is right,” he said, and it was then that Yeonjun’s blood turned into something akin to lead. “It _is_ fucked.” Panic thick enough to choke wound itself around his throat. _I am going to lose him_. _This is how I will lose him_. 

“I don’t think it makes you an asshole, though.” 

And with that, the spell was broken. Yeonjun lifted his face from his hands, and everything unraveled in front of him like he was watching it through water. 

Beomgyu was already sat up, was already looking at him. He was smiling, too, the harsh glare of the practice room lights doing nothing to damper its kindness. “You’re not a bad person for feeling disappointed. Hyung, the fact that you’re _worried_ about coming across as a bad person says enough about your character, I think. That’s not the thing that’s fucked.” He spoke slowly, as if testing the weight of each word on his tongue before he let them out. Yeonjun was reminded, absently, of his mother. 

“What’s fucked is that you think a few diminished points robs your ranking of its meaning.” Beomgyu’s voice was firm but it wasn’t mean. He wasn’t trying to be mean. Yeonjun didn’t know if Beomgyu had it in him to be mean. “I think,” he said, and then paused, humming. His eyes drifted to the ceiling. Yeonjun wanted to look up too, see if he could find the answers there that Beomgyu seemed to see. “I think you’re allowed to celebrate this, still. You can feel both things without guilt. You can feel happy for yourself.” 

Yeonjun’s hands were clenched around the hem of his jacket. How did he only notice it now? 

“Hyungie doesn’t always have to feel like he has to set parameters around his happiness. It doesn’t have to be...conditional? Is that the word I’m looking for? Like—and feel free to tell me to shut up by the way, if I’m reading this completely wrong—I haven’t known you for very long but I noticed that you’re the type of person who feels like they have to earn everything. And that’s not a bad thing!” he hastened to add, meeting Yeonjun’s eye. “But there’s danger there too!” 

Yeonjun felt his brows go up. “What’s the danger?” he asked, unable to stop himself. He was caught between disbelief and actual curiosity. 

“There are some things that aren’t earned, that don’t _have_ to be earned,” Beomgyu replied and he sounded so _earnest_. So _sure_. “In this case, you’ve more than earned it, but hyung―the danger in thinking that you have to work yourself to the bone for _everything_ is that you can’t discern when you should be giving your all and when you shouldn’t.” 

_You’re the same way, you know_ , he couldn’t help but think. He thought of Beomgyu’s 8-hour-long dance lessons on top of the stuff they already do. He thought of Beomgyu’s callused hands, his guitar string scars. He thought of the steel in his stare when he sank into a routine, determined to get it right. 

Soobin’s words came to mind. “ _I see a similar hunger in both of you. A similar voracity, maybe. Like you’re both running on different fuel than the rest of us._ ” 

He watched the light play off of Beomgyu’s eyes, catch in his hair. _We’re running on the same fuel, Choi Beomgyu._

Perhaps it was that thought that pushed him to take the younger’s words with a more open heart. (Not that he wasn’t going to take his advice into consideration at all—Yeonjun had made it this far because he could take feedback—but knowing that Beomgyu understood where he was coming from made his words easier to swallow.) 

They were little arrows fired straight through his windows, and Yeonjun was a little happier to clean up the aftermath, was a little happier to mull things over. 

“You didn’t, by the way,” he said after a while, watched Beomgyu’s face melt into confusion with a slight smile. “You didn’t read me wrong, I mean.” 

The younger smiled then, sheepish. His hand came up to scratch at his ear, a nervous tic maybe. Yeonjun filed the information away for later. 

“And thank you,” he added, quietly raw and achingly sincere. The quaking in his heart was quieter now, thrumming with what he knew to be relief and maybe a few other things he couldn’t name. “I needed to hear that, I think.” 

Beomgyu’s answering grin was radiant. “I’m happy to help. You always help me, so it’s nice to return the favor.” 

_That_ surprised Yeonjun. “Do I?” He tried his best to help the members whenever he could, but _always_? It was a curious word choice. 

Beomgyu nodded. “Hyung helps by being himself.” 

Something odd crashed into the pit of Yeonjun’s stomach. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain it through words,” Beomgyu continued, unaware of the hurricane he’d set off in Yeonjun’s brain, “but knowing that you’re on my side helps a lot. I’m sure it’s the same with the others.” 

He tried to pull himself together enough to wheeze out a reply. “I _am_ on your side,” he said, thankfully, _blessedly_ steady. 

“You are,” Beomgyu’s hands were splayed out on the floor in front of him. Yeonjun stared at the pink of his nail beds, the length of his fingers. “And I’m on yours, too.” 

He swore he heard his neck crack from how fast he looked up. The younger’s eyes were already on him. He was smiling. 

“I’ll always be on hyung’s side, yeah? Like how you’ll always be on mine.” 

Later on, maybe, he’d look back on this and realize that it was this moment that pushed him off the proverbial cliff, the beginning of the slow descent. That it was in this moment that Choi Beomgyu was handed a key, without the knowledge of either him or the owner of said key. 

For now though, he could only gape, wonder at the new pounding in his chest. 

He swallowed. His throat was weirdly dry. “Thank you.” 

Beomgyu smiled. Yeonjun felt the heat of it in his stomach. “Anytime, hyung.” 

And then things changed, little by little but also all at once.

There were new trainees coming in today. Yeonjun heard the news from Soobin. 

“Any of them interesting?” Taehyun asked. He didn’t bother looking up from the hallabong he was peeling. 

Soobin shrugged. “I only heard names. I didn’t get any details.” 

One of these days Yeonjun would have to question Soobin about his questionable sources; while useful, they were getting concerning. 

“I hope they’re interesting,” Beomgyu mused. He was stretched out on the floor in front of Yeonjun. His shins were just by Yeonjun’s hands and he’d been tapping the skin there absentmindedly for almost five minutes now. 

Yeonjun hummed. His thumb ran a small circle over Beomgyu’s ankle. He watched the younger shiver with something akin to fascination. He had the passing thought that however quirky the newbies would be, it’d be hard-pressed for them to pique _his_ interest in the way Beomgyu had. 

“I hope they make it,” Kai mumbled, the acoustics of the practice room carrying his voice to the rest of them. Yeonjun felt a pang of pain for him. A few of his friends had left two days ago, unlucky stragglers in the monthly exodus that usually followed evaluations. 

Soobin put a hand on Kai’s head in a gesture of comfort. Beomgyu whimpered in sympathy, stretching an arm. It was too far for Kai to reach him but the younger stretched an arm out, too. Message received. 

Taehyun quietly put a hallabong slice up to Kai’s lips, who opened his mouth to accept the fruit. 

“They will,” Yeonjun said. They were empty words, really, and they all knew it. You either made it or you left. But there were times when the truth wasn’t necessary, so he opted to make Kai smile instead. 

It worked. 

Yeonjun smiled back, hoped that it offered some comfort. 

Beomgyu had taken to tapping on his forehead if he sensed that Yeonjun was thinking too hard. It happened a lot these days, and Yeonjun was a bit embarrassed by how often the younger’s sixth sense was correct. 

“You worry a lot,” Beomgyu said now, his fingers still resting in between Yeonjun’s brows. They were in the practice room (again) to smooth over a few mistakes with their choreography (again) and maybe it was the late hour that got to him, because he ended up spending almost half of their five-minute break thinking over possible changes they could make just to get it to be easier. 

And he would have stayed that way if Beomgyu hadn’t come over to pull him out of his head, a towel and water bottle in one hand and the other pressing two short taps to his forehead. 

Yeonjun sighed, accepting the towel and the water with a quiet thanks. “Can’t help it,” 

Beomgyu’s answering smile was fond. “I know. I don’t blame you for it.” If Yeonjun leaned a little bit more into the younger’s touch, well, they were secluded enough that no one else could see it happening. He still had deniability. 

“Are you doing anything later?” he asked after a while. Beomgyu cocked his head to the side in askance, his hand falling away from Yeonjun’s face. (If the imprint of his touch still burned, well.) 

“Besides going home?” 

Yeonjun nodded. 

“Well, no. I’m not doing anything later. Why?” 

He felt himself grin around the lip of the bottle. “You wanna eat out then?” There was a restaurant that they often went to, so often that the people there already knew them. The ahjumma who worked the front counter had made a tradition of pointing at the two of them as they walked in, asking them if they would be having their usual and laughing when they nodded eagerly. 

“For what though?” 

Yeonjun made a show of doing a double-take, playfully setting down his bottle extra loudly. “Don’t tell me you forgot what day it is, Choi Beomgyu!” 

Beomgyu’s face melted into a hilarious picture of confusion. “Forgot what? What’s going on?” 

Yeonjun shook his head in exaggerated disbelief. “Wah, I can’t believe you would forget your own anniversary. Unbelievable.” 

“Anniversary?” Beomgyu asked, voice pitching higher at the end, and they might have an audience now. Yeonjun caught Taehyun’s raised eyebrow directed at him and resisted the urge to stick his tongue out. 

“It’s been six months since you joined, Gyu-yah!” he exclaimed, pulling the younger down by the neck to give him a noogie. He released him not a moment later when he started yelling. “How the hell did you forget?”

“How the hell did you _remember_?” 

And Yeonjun had no proper answer to that so he just tapped the side of his nose with a smile that he knew made him look evil. 

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, waving a hand flippantly. “But hyung is treating you, okay? Anything you want.” 

Beomgyu squinted at him a little in suspicion before he slapped Yeonjun’s knee, causing the older to yelp. 

“Ow! The fuck was that for?” 

“I’m suspicious of you.” 

“Why would you be suspicious of me?” 

“You’re rarely this nice to me.” 

Yeonjun pointed at him in genuine offense. “Now that is a lie and we both know it.” 

Beomgyu only squinted harder at him for a few seconds before cracking up. Yeonjun hit him back in retaliation but the younger was quick enough to dodge. “Fine, I’ll go.” 

“You’re acting like it grieves you so much to go when you won’t be paying for anything.” Yeonjun wasn’t whining. He absolutely wasn’t.

But Beomgyu only giggled at him. Kept giggling as they packed up their things to leave, as they went on their way to the restaurant. Was _still_ giggling by the time they’d settled into their seats, their food in front of them. The only thing that silenced him was the food; Yeonjun watched him scarf everything down with a smile hidden behind his hand. 

“Thank you hyung,” he said when they were finished. They were standing outside the restaurant now, the light from the streetlamps throwing Beomgyu into sharp relief. (Yeonjun thought in passing that it was highly unfair that lighting that would usually be unflattering on anyone else just served to make Beomgyu glow.) His voice was soft, meant for only Yeonjun to hear. 

Yeonjun grinned at him, so wide he feared his face might split open. “Anytime, Gyu-yah.” 

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he realized it, but he did have a few options. 

It might have maybe possibly happened like this: 

Circle one

 **A)** They were driving somewhere—Yeonjun couldn’t recall where to anymore even if he tried—and Beomgyu had ended up in the seat next to him on the way there. He couldn’t remember where they were going but he remembered clearly what the weather was like—the kind of cold that you never thought was possible until you lived through it yourself. The five of them bundled up in the thickest jackets they owned and still shivering whenever a breeze leaked through the windows. Soobin, blessedly, had thought to bring his weighted blankets along, and they were stretched along five pairs of legs. 

Yeonjun hadn’t slept the night before. It had been one of _those_ nights, those inexplicable nights where no matter how tired his body was, his mind just refused to cooperate. It had been around the 4 A.M. mark that he decided to give up completely; all they had going on today was a shoot anyway, and the car ride was long. He could get some sleep then. 

But when he found himself sitting next to Beomgyu, those plans went up in flames. 

Beomgyu wasn’t an awful seat partner; in fact, he was an entertaining one. And that was the problem. Yeonjun was going to keep himself awake to listen. He’d resigned himself to his fate (there was nothing else he could do, really) but the younger had taken one look at him, at the darkness that bloomed under his eyes, and sighed. 

“I knew you weren’t sleeping,” he huffed, rummaging through the front pocket of his bag. “I could hear you moving around. It kept _me_ awake.” 

There was half an apology on the tip of his tongue but Beomgyu shook his head before Yeonjun could even say it. He mumbled a small “aha!”, his hand coming out of his pocket with his phone and his earphones.

He fumbled with his handful for a moment, and Yeonjun was about to ask him what he was planning when Beomgyu held out his phone, an audio splitter plugged into the headphone jack. 

Yeonjun stared down at it, stared at Beomgyu. His brain was too tired for this. 

Beomgyu huffed again. “Where are your headphones, hyung?” 

Yeonjun wordlessly handed them over. He watched Beomgyu plug them into the other port. 

“I have a few songs I like listening to when I’m trying to sleep,” Beomgyu said, taking the liberty of putting the earbuds into Yeonjun’s ears. Let it be a testament to how tired Yeonjun was that he could only blink and let the younger go about his business. (The hyung-related-self-directed-anger would come later, when he had more than caffeine and sugar keeping him lucid.) “You can listen to them, I think they’ll help.” 

Yeonjun could only nod. He leaned his forehead against the car window and closed his eyes. Music bloomed softly into his ears. It was an English song, Hozier maybe. Yeonjun felt himself smile. He had an inkling Beomgyu would like Hozier. 

When he woke up again, they were about half-way there. His head was on Beomgyu’s shoulder, his nose tucked into the younger’s neck. Yeonjun took a few moments to absorb the situation—the warmth of the younger’s skin, his pulse, his cologne—before he slowly resurfaced. Beomgyu must have felt him get ready to move because he leaned his head a little to the side so they wouldn’t collide as Yeonjun was on his way up. 

“You feeling better?” he asked. Yeonjun nodded. He felt inexplicably warm everywhere. “You can still sleep for a bit. It’s still pretty far.” 

Yeonjun nodded again. He didn’t want to speak, didn’t feel like he _had_ to. He was going to lean against the window again but Beomgyu caught him by the sleeve of his jacket. 

“You’re gonna get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that.” He let go of Yeonjun’s sleeve to pat his own shoulder. Yeonjun could take a hint, and maybe he was a bit more tired than he realized because he let himself be dragged back. 

Well. Beomgyu was warm. And he smelled so nice. 

Another rogue chill breezed into the car. He felt Beomgyu shiver. 

Yeonjun didn’t feel the cold. 

**B)** He’d been the one to find Beomgyu. 

He’d cooped himself up in a practice room no one ever used, and Yeonjun heard him crying first, felt the seams of his heart break along with each quiet sob. 

He knocked on the door and there was an audible sniff before Beomgyu’s voice sounded, cracked and croaky. “Come in.” 

Maybe he knew it was Yeonjun before the older could even open the door, because there was a look in Beomgyu’s eye that said he’d been expecting him. 

Yeonjun went to him, sat down on the floor a few ways away. If Beomgyu wanted him in his space, he’d ask. Yeonjun was happy to wait. 

For a few moments there was nothing besides Beomgyu’s attempts to stifle his hiccuping. Yeonjun was hit with a severe case of deja vu. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” He broached the subject gently. 

Beomgyu was wiping at his face in the corner of his eye. He hummed when he stopped. “I dunno.” 

“That’s okay,” he was quick to reply. “I can just sit here if that’s what you need.” 

Beomgyu made a noise akin to a wounded animal. Yeonjun looked at him. His eyes were shining in the dim light, twin watery agate marbles. 

“Can—” he started, before breathing deep. He wiped under his eyes again. Yeonjun’s heart clenched. “Can hyung hug me?” 

Yeonjun didn’t have to be told twice. 

He crossed the distance between them before the younger could blink. 

“C’mere cub,” he mumbled, pulling Beomgyu into his arms. The younger’s weight was warm, grounding, each point of contact between them coming alive under Yeonjun’s skin. “C’mere. You’re okay. I’ve got you. Hyung’s got you.” 

He didn’t really know what he was saying anymore, keeping up the stream of words until Beomgyu’s breathing slowed back to normal, until he relaxed completely into Yeonjun’s hold. 

And then he stopped speaking, too, the space his words left behind taken up by occasional sniffling. 

It was Beomgyu who broke the silence. 

“I miss home,” he said, voice so small and Yeonjun’s chest ached. 

“ _Oh_ cub,” he said. Pulled Beomgyu in closer. “ _Oh, cub_.” 

Beomgyu pushed his face into Yeonjun’s shirt, and if he felt a new wetness there a few seconds later, he said nothing. 

**C)** It was Kai who suggested they go to the rooftop. 

They were at a hotel for the week, filming something for their debut show (lord, that was still such a blow to his stomach. _Debut_ . After _years_ , finally within the reach of his fingers) and they’d all been restless for hours, long after filming wrapped. Their manager had watched them bounce off the elevator walls with resignation. “ _I_ _can’t stop your reactions but please do try to get some sleep_ ,” he’d said. 

Well. Fat chance of that happening now. 

The rooftop was open 24/7, they knew. And at this hour, it was guaranteed to be empty. So when Kai brought it up, the idea seemed all too perfect. 

Sneaking out of their hotel room unnoticed was a bit of a challenge but this late into the game, they were already veterans at it. By the time they’d reached the topmost floor, there hadn’t been a single peep from their manager. When they got to the rooftop with no fuss, they exchanged grins. 

Mission accomplished. 

The light pollution in the city was horrible enough that they couldn’t see the stars beyond faint impressions but Yeonjun was happy to squint and pretend that he could see them clearly. Taehyun and Soobin began a game of chase somewhere behind him, intent on shedding the excess energy. Yeonjun couldn’t help but sigh at the sound of their shrieking, though he couldn’t help his smile either.

“Feeling philosophical hyung?” a voice said from next to him. Yeonjun didn’t even bother looking his way; he knew it was Beomgyu. 

“I’m looking for Ursa Major,” he said. 

Beomgyu snorted. “Lame.” 

Yeonjun hit him, snorted at the yelp that escaped him when his hand landed. 

“I thought you were feeling sentimental and that’s why you’re staring out at the horizon but I should have figured that you’re a huge nerd—”

Yeonjun smacked him again.

“Ow! Hyung! No to violence! I am delicate!” 

“You’re about as delicate as a sandpaper, Beomgyu-yah.”

“Mean!” 

He laughed, which only made the younger whine more. 

They calmed down eventually, and Yeonjun went back to looking for his star. 

“Hyung,” Beomgyu said after a while. Yeonjun turned to look at him. He always wondered at how Beomgyu’s eyes were able to catch every single light in any room that he was in. “Thank you for meeting me.” 

Whatever Yeonjun had thought he would say, none of them were _that_. He swallowed down his heart—the stubborn thing was now lodged at the top of his throat—and opened his mouth to reply, but he found that he had nothing to say. He could only look at the little bursts of silver and gold and neon red in Beomgyu’s eyes, the little stars he held trapped in his stare. Yeonjun felt caught—his stomach felt caught, his breath, his heart. 

He licked his lips. Nodded. Beomgyu’s smile was alive with unsaid things. He turned back to the horizon. 

Eventually, Yeonjun did too. 

**D)** “Hyung, here,” Beomgyu said, passing Yeonjun a cup of boba tea. The straw was already stabbed through the top. 

Yeonjun raised an eyebrow but he accepted the drink nonetheless. “Who did you rob to buy this?’ 

Beomgyu stuck his tongue out. “I just wanted to do something nice for you! Mean hyung, I’ll take it back then if you don’t want it.” 

But Yeonjun had already taken a sip. He smiled around the straw. Beomgyu had gotten him his favorite. 

“Never said I didn’t want it, little Kkyu~” he cooed, delighted in the pink flush that bloomed across the younger’s nose and cheeks. 

**E)** “You have an eyelash right there,” Beomgyu mumbled, his thumb pushing off the offending eyelash from Yeonjun’s cheek.

Yeonjun hoped his face wasn’t as red as he felt it was. “Thanks.” 

**F)** “I wish I wasn’t so angry,” Beomgyu mused. They were alone in the practice room again, the other three having left to get food. 

To say Yeonjun was surprised to hear that was an understatement. “You?” he said, his exhaustion too great to stop derision from coming into his tone. “Angry? You?” 

Beomgyu nodded. Yeonjun didn’t remember what they were talking about anymore that brought this about, but he was happy to listen. He was curious to listen, really. 

“You know how other people burn when they’re mad?” Beomgyu asked, and Yeonjun nodded to show he was listening. “And then there are other people who go ice cold, right? It’s like I do both, sometimes. I get the extremes of both. I got mad at my brother recently and I’ve been avoiding his calls for weeks. It’s awful. I hate fighting with him, but I also hate being wrong.” He looked to Yeonjun then, and there was a dormant storm in his face, one that Yeonjun had never would have expected to see cross the younger’s face. 

“I wish I wasn’t so angry,” Beomgyu repeated. 

“Did he deserve it, though, what you’re doing?” Yeonjun couldn’t imagine Beomgyu getting mad enough to freeze over completely if there wasn’t a valid reason. 

The younger was quiet for a while. “I don’t know,” he said, like he was shocked at the words coming out of his own mouth. 

“Well,” Yeonjun said. “You could try talking to him to find out, yeah?” 

The clouds left Beomgyu’s face in an instant and he turned to Yeonjun again, unimpressed. “Nice try.” 

Yeonjun laughed. 

**G)** All of them. Every single one. 

“So why did you want to talk to me?” Soobin asked, his chin propped up on his palm. They were in a cafe Yeonjun knew the younger liked, and Soobin had eyed him suspiciously the minute the storefront came into view. And, yeah, fine, Yeonjun _did_ have an ulterior motive in bringing them here, but the purpose of the restaurant choice wasn’t the one that Soobin might have expected it to be. 

It’s not that Yeonjun needed to butter him up to help him. He already knew that Soobin would help him. 

“See, uh,” he coughed out, pressing his lips together. He was stalling for time, he knew. “I have a problem.”

Soobin’s brow climbed high up his forehead.

Yeonjun needed to butter him up so he wouldn’t make fun of him too hard. 

As if summoned by Yeonjun’s internal pleas, their waiter arrived with their orders. Soobin’s face brightened at the sight of his cherry pie and Yeonjun sighed a little in relief. The food would be able to buy him a little more time. 

There was no easy way to admit what he was going to admit. 

He stuck his fork into his pastry, jerked his arm around. He was annoyed that he didn’t have the appetite to eat; any other time, he’d happily dig into it but with the way his stomach was churning, he worried that even a crumb of it would send him dry-heaving. 

“So,” Soobin repeated, pointing at Yeonjun with his cream-laden fork. “Why did you want to talk to me?” 

Yeonjun took a sip of his water, felt it sink into his tongue like ash. There was no avoiding this now. 

“Uh,” he said. An eloquent start if there ever was one. “W-What do you do,” he dragged out the syllable until all air left him. Soobin was beginning to look concerned. “What do you do when uh,” He swallowed again. His throat was overwhelmingly dry. “What do you—” 

“Hyung?” Soobin interrupted, not unkind. “I think you might need water. Take your time yeah?” He pushed his glass closer to Yeonjun and Yeonjun could only nod, take his own glass in hand and take another shaky sip. 

He set the cup down and sighed. His hands might be trembling. Yeonjun never knew that making yourself vulnerable could be quite this terrifying. (Or, he did, but there was a difference between knowing and _knowing_.) He couldn’t meet Soobin’s eye, preferring to keep his stare firmly on his plate. His leg was jumping under the table-top. 

“Are you breathing, hyung?” 

At Soobin’s words, his mouth gasped open to take in breath. _Oh_. Huh. He hadn’t been. 

He heard Soobin sigh, heard shuffling. Hands (Soobin’s) appeared in his line of sight, taking the fork that he’d left stabbed in the pastry and pressed it gently back into his hand. 

“Eat,” Soobin’s voice was firm. His leader voice. Yeonjun had no choice but to listen, so he did. 

They ate in relative quiet, some interruption coming from Soobin humming to himself as he ate and the general ambiance of the cafe, but apart from that it was silent. Soobin didn’t push, and Yeonjun was forced to reckon with the ringing in his ears and the fact that he might have miscalculated things to an extreme degree. He hadn’t needed to butter Soobin up for _anything_ , and underneath the fifteen layers of nerves, he _knew_ that. But Yeonjun wasn’t being reasonable. _Obviously_. 

If Yeonjun were reasonable then he wouldn’t have done this at all. _He shouldn’t have done this at all_. 

“Are you feeling any better, hyungie?” came Soobin’s voice, a shock of ice-water to his overheating system. 

“Yeah,” he said, praising the high heavens that he sounded normal. 

“Are you good to talk?” 

He sniffed. Took another bite of his food. “I don’t know.” His leg had taken up a new rhythm under the table. 

_Why was this so hard?_

“Okay. I can wait.” 

In spite of himself, he felt his shoulders deflate a little. There was a reason why he went to Soobin. 

There was a solid minute where all Yeonjun could do was drum his fingers on his thighs. Soobin was done eating. He was talking about maybe ordering another coffee when Yeonjun finally gathered the courage to speak. 

“What do you do when you’re in love with your friend?” 

Soobin’s mouth closed with an audible _click_. 

Yeonjun resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes shut. _Here we go_ , his pride whispered, pacing up and down a long hallway, _it’s out. You’ve gone and said it_. 

“Is this,” Soobin started. Yeonjun braced himself. “Is this about Beomgyu?” 

Yeonjun froze. And then he thawed, all of him drooping into his chair. 

He coughed. The noise was sheepish. Yeonjun wondered if everyone else in the building could hear the embarrassment laced through it. “Is it that obvious?” 

Soobin smiled, although it looked like he was trying his best not to. “Hyung. I don’t know how to answer that without you getting mad at me.” 

Yeonjun groaned, shoving his hands into his hair. He’d subconsciously been aware that he looked whipped as shit, but it was one thing to be slightly aware of it and be slapped in the face with the knowledge that he’d been dreadfully, _shamefully_ obvious. 

“So what about it then?” Soobin asked, his voice pitched to carry over Yeonjun’s distress noises. “Are you worried about how the group would take it? Hyung, you know we love you, and none of us are straight anyway—” 

“It’s not that,” Yeonjun shook his head. He threaded his hands together and put them on the table. “I have no idea what to do with it.” At Soobin’s confused face, he added, “With these feelings I have. I have no idea what I should do.” 

In truth, his love felt like a constant weight at the small of his back, pushing him further and further forward, looking for new depths to fall headfirst into. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. 

Yeonjun had known of love, had had brushes with it. He’d never known it to be this potent, this heavy, this intrusive. 

His gardens had been blooming for months now, all of them roses, all of them for one person. Yeonjun didn’t know what to do with his harvest. 

“Well, what do you _want_ to do with them?” Soobin asked, and Yeonjun didn’t have an answer for him. 

What _did_ he want to do? 

He thought of Beomgyu, of his face and his hands and his heart. Thought of what it would be like to love him, on the off-chance that Yeonjun was brave enough to dare. He thought of the house of him, thought of how if he tried to dust his heart for fingerprints he knew he’d only find Beomgyu’s. 

He thought of the house of him, of how Beomgyu had left handprints on the walls of the hallways, of how there was a place in his sitting room that was distinctly Beomgyu-shaped. He thought of the ways Beomgyu had taken up space inside him, welcome space. How Beomgyu had taken their off-kilter introduction in stride and still looked at him with eyes that glowed golden. 

He thought of the darkest corners that laid dormant inside him, how they often snipped at heels in warning before they devoured you completely. Thought of putting Beomgyu through any of that. 

It was agony, he realized, to want to be loved but to know better than to ask for it.

Yeonjun could rearrange his rooms all he wanted. Yeonjun could polish each surface until they gleamed. Yeonjun could even do the unthinkable and try and perfect his heart, but it would not change his darkness. 

“I don’t think I want to do anything with them,” he said at last, his words coming slow. 

Soobin’s brows furrowed. “Why not?” 

And _god_ , Yeonjun didn’t know where to begin. 

“Well, for one thing I don’t know if he feels the same way,” he said. 

Soobin actually snorted. “Now you’re fucking lying.” 

Yeonjun could only stare at him. Realization dawned on Soobin’s face. 

“Oh god,” he muttered, his hands coming to cover his mouth. “ _Hyung_. Did you really not know?” 

Yeonjun wanted to tear his hair out in disbelief. In _denial_. This couldn’t be happening. “ _How was I supposed to know?_ ” 

Maybe it was the very real helplessness in his voice that made Soobin soften again. “Hyung, he didn’t exactly make it a secret.” 

Now he was just even more confused. “He told you?” 

Soobin shook his head. “No, he didn’t, but just. You couldn’t have not known, hyung! If you saw how he looked at you, you couldn’t have not known.” 

Yeonjun’s brain had to be projecting this entire scene. There was no way it was true. “Looked at me?” 

Soobin’s smile was sympathetic, an almost-grimace. “Hyung, he looks at you like you’re the brightest thing in the room, like you cast everything else into shadow. He looks at you like you take up the most space in his field of vision.” 

His stomach was in utter chaos. Yeonjun couldn’t differentiate the butterflies from the fire anymore, he just knew that they were racing to see who could take over the fastest. 

“I,” he said after a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours. “I don’t know how to hold that,” 

“I don’t understand,” 

“I’m,” he said, an aborted gasp of speech. He felt like he was crumbling, like he was coming together. “I don’t know if I can hold his love and be trusted not to drop it,” 

Yeonjun barely knew what to do with his own hands, and they were most often empty. To be given something he didn’t know if he earned would crush his fingers to a fine powder. 

“Hyung,” Soobin said, as gentle as his smile. “That’s a part of love, isn’t it? The risk of love. You don’t know if he can be trusted with your heart, either, but you’ve got to be willing to try. That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it?” 

And maybe Soobin was right (Yeonjun knew, deep inside, that he was), but he got one thing wrong. Yeonjun could trust Beomgyu with his heart, theoretically. It was just a question of whether Beomgyu would still want him if he saw the bits that weren’t pretty. 

“I think you should talk to him about this,” Soobin said. His leader voice again. Yeonjun wouldn’t be able to refuse. “I can tell you’re bursting with what you want to say, but I’m not the audience for it. Beomgyu deserves to know, hyung.” One of Soobin’s hands came forward, covered both of his. “Love deserves to be shared.” 

Yeonjun could do nothing but nod. 

“You can sleep on it if you must, yeah? Just don’t put it off for too long.” 

And Yeonjun _did_ sleep on it. When he woke up the next day, the reality of him loving Beomgyu, of Beomgyu loving him back, was a burnished gold weight in the center of his chest. A hurricane he was all too happy to be swept up in. 

But the rest of his concerns still rang true, and they seemed much more obvious in the harsh light of day. No matter how hard he wished, they were still there, stones at the bottom of his shoes. Yeonjun could try and try and try—he could never give Beomgyu peace. 

So Yeonjun _did_ sleep on it. 

But he also ended up putting it off.

He tried his best not to keep his distance from Beomgyu in the wake of everything, because the younger didn’t deserve it and because Yeonjun was a selfish asshole and couldn’t make himself want to stay away, though it wasn’t for a lack of trying. 

So things stayed the same. Yeonjun made sure that things stayed the same. 

If he caught Soobin’s sympathetic gaze whenever he spent a little too long looking at Beomgyu, he’d just smile tightly and look away. If he was hit with a wave of longing so strong he could bowl over, he’d just pause to breathe in with his eyes shut tight. If he woke up to midnight dreams of warm lips and hot palms, he’d just get up and take a walk around the neighborhood. 

(When asked about his late-night excursions, Yeonjun would only say they were the product of bad dreams. Of all the lies he’d ever said, it was that one that tasted the most bitter.) 

Yeonjun could live with this weight. He could. He would make himself live with it. This would have to be enough. Yeonjun was very familiar with his hunger and very rarely did he make the active decision to ignore it, but with this, he’d learn how to settle. He would. 

He had no other option. 

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, you know.” 

“I know.”

“Hyung. He deserves to know.” 

“I know.” 

“What’s stopping you?” 

“...” 

“Like, really truly. What’s stopping you?” 

“He deserves better.” 

“I don’t think you have the right to decide that, hyung.” 

“...”

“Talk to him. _Soon_. He’s already asked me if I’ve noticed that you’re being distant.” 

“...”

“Hyung. _Please_.” 

“I’ll think about it, Soobin.” 

The reality of his situation was this: 

Choi Yeonjun was a house with too many locked doors and too many keys shoved under doormats. 

Choi Yeonjun was riddled with dark corners he didn’t want anyone to see. 

Choi Yeonjun was too selfish to offer love and not ask for something to be given in return. 

It was Beomgyu who ended up finding him. 

Or maybe “finding” wasn’t the right word. Yeonjun hadn’t been hiding; he just happened to be the only person in the dorm when Beomgyu came back. 

Nevertheless, he was found. 

“Oh,” Beomgyu said, stood in the doorway of their bedroom. “There you are hyung,” 

Yeonjun rolled over onto his side to face him, and his smile came easy at the sight of him (he was a little too sleepy to stop himself). The younger was wind-rumpled, winter gloves in one hand and a thick coat (probably Yeonjun’s) in the other. He’d gone to hang out with a few Daegu friends from what Yeonjun remembered him saying this morning. It was a rare day off today, and Yeonjun had been the only one to stay in to catch up on sleep. 

(Those midnight walks had taken a toll on him.) 

“You were looking for me?” he asked, rubbing at his eye with a knuckle. The light from the living room made Beomgyu look like a walking silhouette; Yeonjun had to squint to see his face. 

Beomgyu nodded. He stepped into their bedroom, closing the door behind him gently, and something close to dread crept into Yeonjun’s bloodstream at the soft _click_. He threw the gloves onto a nearby dresser, the coat getting the same treatment. Yeonjun could only watch the younger as he took off his layers—his scarf was discarded next, landing in a maroon heap by the gloves. Then his sweater, pulled off to reveal a white t-shirt underneath. 

Yeonjun felt like each minute was passing under water. 

Beomgyu walked to meet him at his bunk, smile soft and eyes concerned. Yeonjun wondered in passing when exactly was it that he got so good at distinguishing each different shade of emotion that Beomgyu’s eyes could hold. 

He sat down, his back touching Yeonjun’s stomach. “Are you okay?” he asked. His hand was close to Yeonjun’s.

There were moments in your life where you could tell from the onset that they were going to be important, significance hanging so heavily in the air that you could taste it in the back of your throat with each inhale. Your body was hyper-aware, hyper-vigilant, each cell attuned to make sure each second was accounted for. 

Yeonjun was sure that this was about to be something important. There was already a room being assembled to hold it, his brain making a new space for it to live in. 

He breathed in deep through his nose. He had no idea where this was going to go. Or, he had a hunch. And he didn’t like that hunch. 

But regardless of whatever he did, this was going to be important—and maybe it was his exhaustion, or the influence of the atmosphere that he found himself in now, or maybe it was Soobin’s words in his head, but he was resigned to see it through. 

He exhaled. 

“Yeah,” 

Beomgyu’s eyebrows raised. He didn’t believe him. Yeonjun couldn’t really blame him for that. 

“You’ve been a lot more tired lately,” Beomgyu said. He was playing with his hands. Yeonjun wanted to hold them. “I know you’ve been walking around a lot during the night and I just—I dunno. I was worried I guess. You’ve been uh,” he paused, his mouth clamping shut. He worked his lips for a moment. 

“I’ve been?” Yeonjun egged him on, because even if he had an idea of what this could be about, he was still curious. Always too curious. 

“Distant, I guess,” Beomgyu mumbled but Yeonjun heard him clearly enough. _Always too curious_ , he thought. 

“Have I?” he said, because he was an ass and now that the conversation was in motion, he wasn’t sure if he was ready for it. What was that about him being resigned to see it through? That was a lie. 

Beomgyu pursed his lips. His brows were knitted together, an unhappy little line between them that Yeonjun had gotten used to smoothing over with a finger. He stopped himself, though. 

“I guess I just,” Beomgyu started then stopped, pursed his lips again. “I guess I was just worried that it might have been something I’d done,” he said, and Yeonjun was left a little breathless by the honesty. 

Beomgyu really was the braver one between them, huh?

And Yeonjun was going to ruin it. Because that’s what he did best. 

“Ah, Gyu-yah,” he said, and the playfulness sounded forced even to his own ears. “Why are you so worried? You didn’t do anything.” 

The swiftness of which Beomgyu’s expression flattened almost made Yeonjun flinch. 

“Okay,” he said, voice as flat as cold coffee, and _god_ Yeonjun was horrible. “Whatever you say, hyung.” 

He got up, and the space he left behind was a brand on Yeonjun’s skin. He crossed the room, opened the door. He didn’t spare Yeonjun a backwards glance as he closed the door behind him.

Yeonjun watched the door for a minute, half-expecting for Beomgyu to appear again, smiling again, all sepia-toned and shaped like every dream Yeonjun has ever had, both waking and in sleep. _Come back_ , he thought, _come back and look at me more. Don’t look at me like you’re disappointed in me, even if that’s all I’ll ever do_. 

_Come back_. 

Yeonjun fell on his back. He shoved a hand through his hair. He closed his eyes. 

  
  
  


_No_. 

His eyes snapped open. Something unbidden boiled underneath his skin, something like fear, like nerve, like bravery. Pride, maybe. Ambition. All of the above. 

Whatever it was, it pushed him to sit up. 

In the split-second rush of heat, he made a choice. 

Beomgyu had always been the braver one between them. 

_This is going to be important_ , his mind whispered. It sounded like Soobin. 

Yeonjun was going to be brave, too.

He stood up, walked to the bedroom door and yanked it open. The light of the living room almost stung in its suddenness. 

He found Beomgyu on the couch, who’d jumped at the sound of the door swinging. His eyes met Yeonjun, and there was still sunlight coming in from the window, weak but there, and they made Beomgyu’s eyes look gold. 

And Yeonjun made up his mind then. 

“I lied,” he said. He had a death-grip on the doorknob, but he feared letting go of it would make him crash completely. His strength was there but it was there on borrowed time. He’d be robbed of it soon enough—anchoring himself was the smartest move. “I lied about being fine.” 

Beomgyu didn’t answer, but he did turn in his seat to face Yeonjun more fully. Yeonjun took it as a signal to continue. 

“I had this sudden realization,” he said, his heart a hummingbird in his ribs, trying to fly up his throat and out his mouth. The wings hit bone and it kept him going. “I had several realizations, or like, I made the same realization several times.” He breathed in deep. _Here we go_ , his mind, his pride, his ambition whispered, _let’s see how this goes_. “Choi Beomgyu, I am in love with you.” 

The silence that followed was like a twelve-tonne weight against Yeonjun’s shoulders. 

“I am in love with you and you don’t have to do anything about it,” he added, and was the room spinning or was that just him? “I tried to keep it to myself but I couldn’t do it. It just made me feel horrible. I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t ruin anything. I’m sorry.” 

He stopped with a stuttering half-gasp. There was a dull throb in the hand that he kept around the doorknob. His knees might be trembling. 

He looked Beomgyu in the eye (when had he looked away?) and undiluted fear washed over him like ice water. Yeonjun had familiarized himself with each Choi Beomgyu Face, had cataloged each one with its own description and name. He did not know this one. 

“Hyung,” Beomgyu said at last, the quiet shattering like glass, shards landing around Yeonjun’s feet. “Hyung come here,” 

Yeonjun went, albeit slowly, like each part of him was defrosting with each step. He still couldn’t distinguish the look on Beomgyu’s face. 

He took a seat on the couch. Beomgyu grabbed hold of his hands and tugged and tugged until they were facing each other, sitting sideways. 

“Hyung,” he said, and now that he was closer, Yeonjun could see a slight sheen in his eyes. Oh fuck, was he about to cry? 

“Hyung,” he said again, and Yeonjun gave a jerky nod to show that he was listening. “Hyung, why are you sorry?” 

_Huh?_

“Huh?” he said. Everything in him came to a screeching halt. 

“Why would you apologize?” Beomgyu asked. His thumbs were drawing circles in Yeonjun’s wrist. “Hyung, why would you apologize for loving me?” 

And here came the hard part. Yeonjun steeled himself. 

“Because I can’t ask you to love me back,” he said. Confusion drew over Beomgyu’s features. “I couldn’t ask you to love me back.” 

“Hyung, you’re not asking me to love you back by confessing,” Beomgyu said. “That’s not how it works.” 

“It does for me though,” Yeonjun insisted. He had to make Beomgyu see. “I’m—” 

He inhaled, tried to get his thoughts in order. It was weird how he was so sure he wanted to keep this to himself but now, given the slightest prodding, he felt ready to burst. 

“Beomgyu, I’m selfish. Always have been. I try really hard not to be and I think I’ve gotten better over the past few years but—but with this I can’t help it. I can’t just say that I love you and let it be left at that. I have to ask for you to love me back. I want to ask. But that shouldn’t have to be on you.” He was digging his nails into his palms now. Beomgyu was trying to wrench his hands open with little success. “I didn’t want to tell you because I would have to ask for reciprocation, and you don’t deserve that.” 

“Hyung,” Beomgyu said. His voice was thick. Yeonjun shook his head. He needed to let this out in one go or he’d never get it done. 

“You deserve so much, Gyu-yah. You deserve the best. I can’t give you that. I’ll disappoint you eventually, I’ll make a mess of things, I’ll hurt you somehow because that’s what I always do. I can’t give you perfect, and perfect is the least of what you deserve.” 

Yeonjun could take down the house of him and rebuild from the ground up, make it into something that could be worthy of housing the sun, but Yeonjun was a farce of an architect and he couldn’t bring himself to ask for love on shaky knees. 

“I think I might be awful,” he whispered. 

_Let’s see if he’ll still want you._

“Hyung,” Beomgyu said, and his voice was still firm if a little wet. “Hyung, listen to me, okay?” 

Yeonjun nodded. 

“Hyung, you’re not awful, and let me speak first,” he said, holding up a hand to stop Yeonjun from interrupting. “Hyung is not an awful person. You’re not selfish, either—asking for love doesn’t make you an awful person.” 

“I don’t want to have to ask you though,” he interjected because he couldn’t help himself. His pride was bristling and he couldn’t help himself. “I shouldn’t have to ask you to love me.”

“But hyung, you already do,” Beomgyu said gently. His words fell like concrete on Yeonjun’s chest. “You ask me to love you every time you look at me.” 

Yeonjun stared at him. “You knew?” 

“I had a hunch,” Beomgyu clarified. “And you know how I feel, too, I’m assuming.” 

Yeonjun could only nod. 

“Yeonjun hyung, I’m thankful that you’re trying to look out for me, but you don’t get to decide what I deserve.” He was still speaking tenderly. Yeonjun was hit with a strong sense of deja vu. “You don’t get to choose for me like that. And I _do_ choose you.”

And Yeonjun knew this already, but hearing it sent a shock wave through him all the same. 

“And hyung, look, I don’t need a disclaimer for loving you. I don’t need warnings—I don’t need you to tell me who you are before I try to love you because I already know.” 

Beomgyu’s hands came up to his cheeks, swiping his thumbs underneath his eyes. There was wetness there. Oh. _Oh_ , Yeonjun must be crying. 

“I don’t love you because of your brightness alone, hyung—because you are bright, don’t dispute that—I love you _because_ I know of your darkness, too. You are a person, you are flawed like a person should be, and I don’t want you any less for it.” 

Yeonjun cupped Beomgyu’s jaw. He was crying now, too. 

“Hyung, you’ve shown me who you are. You _have_ ,” he added, having seen the skepticism on Yeonjun’s face. “Even the parts of you that you tried to hide, you’ve shown me. I _know_ you. I love you in broad daylight. I have seen you. I love everything that I’ve seen.” 

_Christ_ , Yeonjun’s mind whispered. _Christ_. 

“And if there are things that I haven’t seen,” Beomgyu continued, taking a deep, ragged breath, “I will look for them. I will love the parts of you that you don’t even know about yet.” One of his hands left Yeonjun’s face to press against his chest, right over his heart. “I will find them, and I will love them. I will love them before you even get the chance to hold them.” 

Yeonjun pulled him in. Beomgyu went happily. 

“God, Beomgyu,” he said. It was all he could say, really. “God, Beomgyu, god,” over and over again, crushing the younger to his chest like he could absorb him through force and willpower alone. 

“Hyung,” Beomgyu said, his face so close and Yeonjun didn’t know who leaned in first but the younger’s mouth was on his and he swore he could touch the sun and be left unscathed. The sun was in him now, in his sitting room, in his chest, in his stomach. 

“I love you, okay?” he said against Beomgyu’s lips. His breath felt warm against Yeonjun’s face. “So much.”

“Thank god,” Beomgyu whispered, “because I love you, too.” 

Yeonjun grinned, leaned back in. Beomgyu was right there to meet him. 

“I don’t understand your love,” he said. They were in his bed now, tucked close, always close. Beomgyu’s face was in his neck. Yeonjun couldn’t remember the last time he was this happy. 

The younger hummed, questioning. 

“I don’t understand your love,” he repeated, a little louder. “Or how I’ve earned it.” 

He felt Beomgyu huff, his breath hot against his skin. He pulled back slightly until he could look Yeonjun in the eye. 

“Silly hyung,” he said, smiling, and Yeonjun understood now why certain galaxies were named after people. “You don’t have to earn what is freely given.” 

Yeonjun often thought of the human body as a house. It wasn’t even his thought to claim, really; his mother had made the connection one night, when she was musing about souls and guts and human hearts. She’d been tipsy at the time, three glasses of wine in and having just finished a book for her night class. The book was to blame for the spiral apparently. Yeonjun never read it, so he couldn’t talk. 

She’d said this:

“ _Like, really if you think about it—the body is a house isn’t it? Different bits of soul living in different rooms, all stacked together, sitting next to each other. Some of the rooms connecting, some of them with locked doors. We let people in at the front door and show them the sitting room, the kitchen. But never the basement, never the attic, never our bedrooms unless we trust them. A_ house _Yeonjun! The human body is a house!_ ” 

It never left his mind afterwards, because it _did_ make sense. The human body is a house. 

Yeonjun’s body was a house. 

He had locked rooms and dark corners. He had secrets hidden in the walls. He had a litany of things that needed fixing. 

But he’d also built it on his own, and that was something to be proud of, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t an overnight thing—no matter how hard Yeonjun wished it to be—but he wanted to keep going. 

And people made it easier, too. 

His members helped, sprucing up his rooms and leaving parts of them behind for safekeeping. His family, as always, helped, there to remind him of his foundation, of who he was before he was anything other than their son. 

Beomgyu helped, too. Helped the most, really. 

He carried nightlights with him when he ventured into one of the locked rooms. Sat with Yeonjun in the basement where it was often cold and drafty and too full of old shame. Held his hand through the darkest corridors in places inside him that he never even knew existed. 

Beomgyu helped a lot, but most of the efforts fell on Yeonjun. 

He was learning how to give himself grace, to exorcise old ghosts that should have passed on ages ago now. To be more comfortable in his own skin. 

So no, it wasn’t an overnight thing. But Yeonjun was okay with that.

Yeonjun was loved, after all. He was going to be okay. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it! <3  
> writing twt: [@altbeomjuns](https://twitter.com/altbeomjuns)  
> moodboard tweet is [here](https://twitter.com/altbeomjuns/status/1353959928696774656?s=20)
> 
> the prompt:  
>  _Canon (present day or future). Beomgyu has always been in love with Yeonjun. Yeonjun is still learning how to love himself. (But that's okay. Beomgyu will love him enough for the both of them til he gets there. / he'll get there.) or: that slow burn canon compliant fic that follows TXT boys from pre-debut to post, where Yeonjun was Beomgyu's first role model (public) and first love (private) and it's taken a long time for Yeonjun to even realize it but that's okay because Beomgyu knew he'd be in this for the long haul._
> 
> (also: cookies and milk to whoever can guess what the "Yeonjun caught up with him eventually." in the fic summary means!)


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